More Than the Mom Agenda: Real Friendships, Inevitable Shifts

By Jennifer Savage, 9-08-07

I have a girlfriend that I met when I showed up to her house for a book club someone else had invited me to. I didn’t know who I was looking for as I knocked on the door that night years ago but when she answered I knew we’d be friends. She was hip in a black t-shirt and pixie bangs. She was refreshing. She was open. She offered me a beer, referred to the “feminist perspective” when discussing the book and before I knew it we were exchanging life stories way into the night. I’d just moved to Missoula and when I walked into her house felt, for the first time since I’d been here, like I’d found my people. 

I joked at her wedding a few years later that as soon as I met her I knew I wanted to be her friend and that I thought I would just follow her around until she wanted to be mine. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. We hit it off and we’ve been friends ever since I landed on her doorstep.

My friend and her partner are choosing not to have children and I’ve had womb itch since I was like 23. We’ve both known this about each other for years and respect each other’s decisions. We’ve both been supporting women’s choice for too long not to. But as the reality of our decisions sink in, we’re finding that our relationship is shifting and that this change is inevitably scary.

When Eliza was born, I had few friends with babies. I found myself seeking the counsel of other mamas out there, which meant I had to step out of my friend group, and comfort zone, to find women to talk to. When we new mamas would gather we had on our mom hats. We talked about slings, diapers, to use or not use a pacifier, sleep patterns and left with helpful tips we’d found on the Internet. I often left these gatherings with an empty feeling, like I’d made no connection at all with these women. 

We were supposed to be supporting each other in this hard new endeavor but we had no idea what sparked each other, what pissed each other off, who the other voted for, where we grew up or what we did for a living. Sometimes we didn’t even know each other’s names.

I want more than sticking to the mom agenda. And it is the rare, rare occasion that this happens. I realize I can’t be friends with someone just because we have kids the same age. For me, those friendships have a limit, a boundary that I don’t like to impose. So far these because-we-have-kids relationships have proven to be polite, informative and, ultimately, stale.

Having just had a baby is such a vulnerable place but for so many women it’s the hardest time to admit vulnerability to each other. We need to seem in control, in charge, on schedule. And so few us actually are but we need to at least appear like we know we are doing, which we don’t. Ever.

This lack of vulnerability is what frustrates me most and I find myself counting the minutes until I can twist my way out of these interactions. When I can’t take it anymore, I run to my friend’s doorstep, go in for a glass of wine and tell her all about it, pink and raw. And, thank God, she keeps letting me in.

I’m coming to realize that in the throes of this living people forget to call back, lose emails and drift away from each other. But since I’ve had a baby I’ve found that I need my friend, and the other women in my life like her, more than ever.

I’m trying, she’s trying. And so far we’re still calling each other back.

I’m also coming to realize that we are more than the sum of our decisions. We’re living, breathing women who, with or without children, still need to drink gin and talk into the night about the families we grew up with, traveling and why we fell in love with our husbands. We need to be able to show up unannounced to an evening on the deck with good books between us and to keep the other sane in the face of aging parents and grandparents. We still need each other and even though our relationship may shift, I don’t see that changing.

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